The present invention relates to an improvement of the layout display device of an electronic printer, whereby display segments can be effectively utilized.
Various types of portable electronic typewriters and wordprocessors with 16 character per line display sections have recently been developed wherein positions of characters sequentially entered on a line to be printed are displayed on an LCD layout display section provided separately from the character display section. Segment electrodes whose number is the same as that of the maximum number of characters which can be printed within one line are linearly arranged in the layerout display section. The segment electrodes corresponding to the number of input characrters for one line are driven and flickered, thereby indicating the current cursor position on the line. An operator can visually check the current cursor position by observing a flickering position in the layout display section. Furthermore, the operator can check which line on a page is currently being printed.
In the layout display section, however, since the number of display segments is predetermined, some specific display segments are never used in accordance with differences of pitches between the characters to be printed for one line, and line pitches between the lines to be printed on one page. Therefore, the entire display screen of the layout display section cannot be effectively utilized.
In a conventional electronic typewriter, for example, one of a character pitch mode for allowing either an input of a maximum of 96 characters or a character pitch mode for allowing an input of a maximum of 80 characters is selected, printing being performed in the selected mode. Such an electronic typewriter normally has a layout display section with 96 segments which correspond to a maximum printing character number of 96. When the 80-character pitch mode is set, after printing is completed in the 96-character pitch mode, display segments corresponding to 16 characters at either side of the screen are not driven at all. All the display segments cannot, therefore, be effectively utilized.
The above inconvenience also occurs when sheet size is changed. When a wide sheet is replaced with a narrow sheet, a blank is formed on the layout display section after the sheet size is changed if the character size and pitch remain the same. As a result, some display segments are not utilized.
When the line pitch is changed while the same sheet size is employed, a blank portion is formed on the layout display screen after the line pitch is, for example, decreased. As a result, again some display segments cannot be utilized, resulting in inconvenience.